And all very nice too, no doubt. But consider the terrific problem involved.

She does not say that the skirt and knickerbockers were made of the same kind of stuff. If she had, I could have understood it, and my natural delicacy would for ever have kept me from the slightest allusion to the subject.

What she does say is that the skirt and knickerbockers were made of the same stuff. That is very different, and involves hideous complications.

Firstly, it must mean that the knickerbockers were made out of the skirt. Well, there may have been surplus material from that coloured scarf, and it is not for me to say. But, secondly, it must also mean that the skirt was made out of the knickerbockers. Oh, help!

No, I positively refuse. I will not say another word. There are limits. Only an abstruse theologian with a taste for the more recondite niceties of obscure heresies could possibly do justice to it.